TULSA, OK - Two years ago, attorney Kent Morlan proposed the city of Tulsa establish a free Wi-Fi Internet umbrella downtown. Now, the owner of Morelaw.com has acted on his ideas with the Tulsa's Central Park Homeowners' Association, providing free wireless Web to condominium owners in the two towers. With the 20-story downtown structures at Seventh Street and Elwood covering more than 400,000 square feet, Morlan suggested filling all the holes in the steel and concrete towers presented the greater challenge. "It's like building Internet access to a town that has 800 residents," said Morlan, president of Oklahoma's largest condominium association.
"We're basically trying to figure out how to get all of the corners lit up," he said. "Theoretically, if you put two routers on every floor and you put them equal distance down the hall, then all the units would be able to see that router." The project started as a way to reduce the association's telecommunications costs while actually upgrading those services. Morlan, who oversaw the work, started last year by installing two T1 circuits and transferring some of the communications channels over to those, along with association computers formerly on DSL.
He then added Cat-5 cabling in the tower's phone closets and connected Wi-Fi routers throughout the building, which is managed by Leinbach and Co. For a total investment of less than $5,000, he established an open architecture system allowing both the 800-plus Central Park residents and their visitors to use Wi-Fi enabled devices for free, not just in the buildings and common areas, but around the surrounding pool and park areas and 14 townhouses.
But the "free" element may end up more for visitors. Of the 350-plus residents he estimated use the Internet, Morlan said most have chosen to pay $100 to be hard-wired into the system, or $165 for their own secure router. "You don't want to do banking on an open circuit," he said, understanding their motivations. "People can see your computer. It's not a good idea, generally. "To expand the connectivity, I will personally wire a resident's unit for free," he said. "And then the association buys the router and the resident agrees to host it. And hosting it, it's a self-maintaining system. If it quits working, they'll unplug it and restart it."
While the Central Park installation validates many of the ideas he once suggested for all of downtown, Morlan now sees less need for such a system, as many businesses provide "hot spot" access. People at several neighboring operations, like the Downtown Doubletree Hotel, have similarly tapped the Central Park bubble. Morlan foresees continued improvements. Next year the association will consider replacing its T-1 lines with fiber-optic service, which he said would equate to 18 T-1s or more. "It's essentially a completed system," he said. "It may never be finished."
Source: The Journal Record